Robin Williams, Under Control (Review of "Man of the Year"

Time ^ | 10/6/2006 | Richard Schickel

[dave k]

The political satire Man of the Year is watchable, but it might have been so much more.

Robin Williams is a dangerous guy. Or maybe he and the people who make his movies just think he’s a dangerous guy. There is an unwillingness to just let him rear back and spritz for the length of a movie — as if they fear we, in the audience, will grow tired of his gift, often amounting a form of genius, for surrealistic free-association. They are always giving us, as writer-director Barry Levinson does in Man of the Year, tastes and tidbits of Williams in full cry, the while looking for calming cutaways, subplots and diversions that will permit us respite from his mania. All too often this material is sanctimonious and sentimental, humanistic drivel, and doing it Williams often seems shifty, looking for love in all the wrong places.

Levinson, for whom Williams did a memorable turn in Good Morning, Vietnam almost 20 years ago, does not make that mistake in their new film; Williams is no worse than agreeable when he’s not being flat-out funny. In Man of the Year Williams plays a cable show comedian named Tom Dobbs—sort of a Jon Stewart on speed—spouting liberal-minded socio-political criticism. One of his fans proposes that he run for President, and before you know it he’s on the ballot in enough battleground states to pose a threat to the establishment candidates. He devastates them in a televised debate and wins the election.

[Borges]

Do you mean in his act? Williams isn't gay.

[Cecily]

He was good in that movie. He also gave a good non-comic performance in "Moscow on the Hudson."

[Borges]

I meant that the only way it could possibly be taken seriously...was as satire.

[RayStacy]

Spin off of H. Days? That DOES sound vaguely familiar, now that I think of it. Oh, the horrors! Oh, the humanity!

[dmz]

You brought up Foxworthy in this context, and I put in my 2 cents worth about him. Kind of like what everyone is doing on this, and all other, threads. As for the "after you" part, read your freepmail.

[Redcloak]

There is an unwillingness to just let him rear back and spritz for the length of a movie

Williams' worst movies have always been the ones where the director fails to keep him on a short leash. You can't make a movie by attempting to wrap a plot around two hours of random, incoherent, loony riffing; it just doesn't work. You can channel it into something useful (as Disney was able to do), but it never works as the core of a story.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Thought he was also good in Good Will Hunting.

[trisham]

I liked him in "Mrs. Doubtfire". Other than that, and especially in his stand-up routine he leaves me cold.

[dave k]

Christopher Walken - "This movie could use some more cow bell!"

[dave k]

I agree...I cannot stand watching the guy on any talk show - he can't sit still and is completely all over the board in his 'delivery'...

[driftless2]

"a punk"

Agreed. A very unfunny punk at that. Anyone who thinks he's funny should have sit through "R.V." like I was forced to on a recent vacation flight. The next funny thing he says will be his first.

[kidd]

Thought he was also good in Good Will Hunting.

The ONLY movie of his that I liked. And in that movie he had almost no intentionally funny lines.

[dave k]

No surprise...he probably donated the infamous scream to Howard Dean as well.

[driftless2]

Au contraire. Foxworthy's You-know-you're-a-redneck routine is far funnier than anything William's has ever done. Average Americans never get tired of them. The rest of Foxworthy's stand-up bit is funnier than Williams too. But of course Williams has never done anything that could be considered funny so Foxworthy only has to jump over a very low bar to beat him.

[wideawake]

That I agree with - though I would say that certain bits of the film were intended as satire.

Just a poor film in general, however.

BTW, I broke down and went to see Black Dahlia in the theater this week. Unsatisfying - and I'm a DePalma fan.

[Borges]

It's amusing that DePalma started out in the '60s making counterculture films (with Deniro, who he spotted before Scorsese) that nobody went to see and decided that thrillers were more lucrative. And he's been at it for almost 35 years.

[weegee]

Ann Richards' famous "He can't he'p it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth." line was written for her by Lily Tomlin's gagwriter.

The left would like nothing more than a nation "educated" by Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, and David Letterman cutting one liners.

[weegee]

He was coked up in those days and "free associating" comedy. This was the secret to his improvisational genius.

Meanwhile America has forgotten Johnathan Winters.

[weegee]

What is amazing is that Liberals really believe that if everyone would just hear the "truth to power" message, if we would just listen to the liberal socio-polical ideas then we would all be on board (singing kumbaya, no doubt).

"I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist."

"The peace proposal of the Viet Cong is the only honorable, just, possible way to achieve peace in Vietnam."

-- Jane Fonda, speaking at Michigan State University during a fund-raising tour for AWOL GI's, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the Black Panther Party, November 22, 1970

[weegee]

I think it is a "had to be there" kind of thing. It pushed up production costs and causes production delays to keep reshooting a scene but they have "so much fun" while he's cracking jokes, that the director wants to "keep it in there".

Throw it in the end credits with the other bloopers.